School funding 'reform' carries a steep price: PennLive letters

Backers of SB 76 and HB 76 should be careful what they wish for. This proposed legislation would eliminate school property taxes and shift funding to the state, to be supported by increased state sales and income taxes. But it would drastically undermine local control of the schools. At the mercy of state funding, and stripped of taxing authority, school boards would be nearly powerless. School districts would become little more than branch offices of the state education bureaucracy.

And what of the promised money from the state? Odds are that, sooner or later, the revenue generated by the new taxes would fall short of education costs across the state. These taxes would then have to go up, or school boards would be forced to dumb down their programs to match what the state could afford. Probably both.

As a way around this, the law would allow a school board to augment state funding with a local income tax, but this would require a referendum. Good luck with that, since the new state taxes were supposed to be enough to do the job.

So, yes this legislation would get rid of property taxes, but the price is­ loss of local control and uncertain financing. In my view, the price is too steep, because our schools would suffer.